Say Anything Blog

Clarice Feldman

jveritas reports this:

  In his speech released yesterday Abou Omar Al Baghdadi the supposed leader of the Islamic State in Iraq which is Al Qaeda in Iraq said that only two hundered Mohajeroon are left in Iraq. Mohajeroon which means immigrants in Arabic are the foreign terrorists who came to fight in Iraq. This is yet the most stunning admission by Al Qaeda in Iraq that they are totally destroyed and from the tens of thousands of foreign terrorists they had, almost all of them are killed and captured and only two hundreds are left.

  This is the quote translation of what Al Baghdadi said in his latest speech: “... with all that, the Mouhajeron in Mesopotamia left the world and went quickly to meet their lord after they sacrificed their money and their blood sometimes in the martyrdom operations and sometimes by throwing themselves in front of the enemy that only two hundreds Mouhajeron are left today in our beloved Iraq…”

His source is the largest terrorist website online.  He says the full text in Arabic can be found here. the full text in Arabic please use this link that was posted on Ekhlass terrorist forum

More good news.  The leftie heads are exploding as they desperately try to put a negative spin on this.

The Nobel Committee might as well have called it Al Gore’s Inner Peace Prize, given the way it seems designed to help him disown his lifelong ambition to become president in favor of a higher calling, as savior of a planet.

The media will be tempted to blur the fact that his medal, which Mr. Gore will collect on Monday in Oslo, isn’t for “science.” In fact, a Nobel has never been awarded for the science of global warming. Even Svante Arrhenius, who first described the “greenhouse” effect, won his for something else in 1903. Yet now one has been awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.

How this honor has befallen the former Veep could perhaps be explained by another Nobel, awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman for work he and the late Amos Tversky did on “availability bias,” roughly the human propensity to judge the validity of a proposition by how easily it comes to mind.

Their insight has been fruitful and multiplied: “Availability cascade” has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; “informational cascade” for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd’s beliefs; and “reputational cascade” for the rational incentive to do so.



Mr. Gore clearly understands the game he’s playing, judging by his resort to such nondispositive arguments as: “The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona.”

Here’s exactly the problem that availability cascades pose: What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged “consensus” arrived at their positions by counting heads?

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn’t. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they’ve chosen to believe.

[...]

No, this wouldn’t prove or disprove a human role in warming, only that climate is variable and subject to complicated influences. But it would also eliminate the large incentive for politicians to traffic in doom-laden predictions--because such predictions would no longer command media assent and would cease to function as levers to redistribute resources.

Mr. Gore would have to find a new job.

The Daily Kos Poem Of The Day: The End To Capitalism

Over at the Daily Kos, diarist Famoso116lex is railing against an evil even greater than George Bush: Capitalism!

In his own words,

“This poem is to re-enforce people that are from the middle class and poor class to fight capatilism. This poem is dedicated to the real patriots of America. The poem has been created to condition the mind into fighting exploitation. This poem encourages people of all walks of life to fight capatilism.”

[...]

Trapped in a machine that only nourishes the rich

Like a glitch in the system that hard to catch

And bombs that drop on kids with legs detached

Women, Children, and Men for Oil!

Is this the “Freedom” you bring to the New World?

Amerikkka Now Hides Behind A New Freedom

The one that gives you death instead of Life

Why Don’t you just get up and fight?

Stop Wasting your time in Protest and Strikes

The plight of the poor is at an increasing rate

Why don’t you allow yourself to be suicidal and late our economy crash?

Let the remains of bodies relapse into Freedom.

Revolution is The Death of the American Stock Market.

Let us join hands and resist temptations, and remove the need to buy from our sight and ears.

This Time we Will Win!

Sing a hymn towards the Federalist Building…

Sing Along,..

Stop, Buying Commodities....hymnnn

Stop, For a minute and call in sick...hymnnn

Stop, for a minute a break a government vehicles glass...hymnnnn

Stop, for a minute and graffiti the Walls of Revolution.AND stop the War...hymnnnn

Stop, for a minute and stop the Market...Hymnnnn!!!

Stop, for a minute and clog up the toilets… Hymnnn

Stop for a minute stop paying your Taxes...Hymnnn!!!

Stop. But Don’t stop for a Minute if the poor and middle class create a Revolution!

Down with “capatilism!” Viva la communism! Viva la Kos!

Find it here

  The largest known oil shale deposits in the world are in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Estimates of the oil resource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels. Not all resources in place are recoverable. For potentially recoverable oil shale resources, we roughly derive an upper bound of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and a lower bound of about 500 billion barrels. For policy planning purposes, it is enough to know that any amount in this range is very high. For example, the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day. If oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand, 800 billion barrels of recoverable resources would last for more than 400 years.

  ...Shell anticipates that, in contrast to the cost estimates for mining and surface retorting, the petroleum products produced by their thermally conductive in-situ method will be competitive at crude oil prices in the mid-$20s per barrel. The company is still developing the process, however, and cost estimates could easily increase as more information is obtained and more detailed designs become available. [PA note: even if costs turned out to be 3X, its still economically viable at today’s prices]

[...]

If you take 1/4 of the US demand out of the world market, world oil prices would have to collapse to whatever OUR baseline production costs+profit are—which would be fixed by petro engineering economics rather than the whim of dictators, Arabs, and various loons. Prices today are arbitrary and build in worry factors about supply. If we know we can produce and sell a barrel for say $50, and then do it, it compels the arbitrary pricers to meet our price or lose business. Worry factors for American/Canadian oil would be near zero - foreign wars, loony dictators, etc would have little effect on production and delivery capability from CONUS and Canadian facilities.

I’m sure this will generate all sorts of screeching from the Oil Drum crowd and the peak oil loons.

The bottom line here is - the US and Canada have within our grasp the power to blow the crap out of the world oil prices, maintain fat profits for our oil companies for hundreds of years to come, and make our economies freaking juggernaughts all at the same time.

[...]

Maybe it’s time for us to put an end to the tyranny of OPEC.  We need a strong Conservative in the White House to lead this effort.

Thomas Lifson

From the Seattle Times “local news” page:

  James Michael McHaney, 28, was charged Saturday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., with using a computer to arrange a sexual encounter with an informant posing as a boy, according to court records.

Funny that something which happened in the District of Columbia is called “local news” by a Seattle paper. If they made it “political news” maybe more people outside of the Seattle metropolitan area might notice it.

Why would the Seattle Times care?

McHaney was a staffer for Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat.

  McHaney joined Cantwell’s staff in 2006. He could not be reached for comment.

  In a statement, Cantwell’s chief of staff, Michael Meehan, said, “late Friday afternoon the FBI informed our office that a Senate employee was arrested. The employee was immediately fired.

  “Our office has and will continue to fully cooperate with the ongoing federal criminal investigation. Senator Cantwell has zero tolerance for crimes against children.”

[...] 

But we all know that the only sex scandals that interest the press are those involving Republicans

I wonder if this actual solicitation of a child will get a fraction of the attention Larry Craig got for “foot gestures” toward an adult.
More leftie hypocrisy.

SHARON COOLIDGE

Andrew Butler should be a junior at the University of Toledo, where the theater major would be starring in school plays, maybe one day headed to Hollywood or Broadway.

Christopher Avery should be a sophomore at the University of Cincinnati, an engineering major with a lucrative career ahead.

Instead, the men are going to prison for at least 20 years because they tried to raise tuition money with two armed holdups last summer.

Avery, 22, of College Hill, and Butler, 20, of Milford, pleaded guilty Monday in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court to two charges of aggravated robbery and six charges of kidnapping.

Butler pleaded guilty to an additional charge of vandalism stemming from damage done to the Hamilton County Justice Center after his arrest.

“Why?” Judge Steve Martin asked the men, who had no criminal records. “You’re in college, I don’t understand.”

Both men cited tuition.

Butler said tuition went up so his scholarships and financial aid were not enough.

“I was stressed out,” he said. “I needed more money for college.”

Avery said an internship at Kroger fell through, leaving no money for summer classes.

“I was strapped for cash,” he said. “I thought I had nothing to lose.”

The men said they faced two options: steal the money or drop out.

That’s when the two friends hatched a plan to get the cash they needed.

[...]

The logical result of the entitlement mentality.
Whatever happened to working your way through school?

Find it here

The 2nd Annual Worst Quotes From The Daily Kos (2007 Edition)
America’s most influential blog is the Daily Kos. Democratic members of Congress post on the blog, Democratic presidential contenders cater to them, and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas is considered to be a mainstream figure amongst Democrats.

Keep all of that in mind as you read these excerpts and quotes, all of which come from the Daily Kos writers, not from commenters on the blog:

10) “I wrote a diary a short time ago about how the Bush administration helped ruin my marriage. It wasn’t because my husband was a Bush supporter or anything…it was because of all the stresses from job loses, living without health insurance and getting sick, to my husband being forced to take a job where he wasn’t home much that helped ruin my marriage.”—angrybird
[...]

8) “I know I’m a Jewish lesbian and (Ahmadinejad would) probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon…
Okay, I admit it. Part of it is that he just looks cuddly. Possibly cuddly enough to turn me straight. I think he kind of looks like Kermit the Frog. Sort of. With smaller eyes. But that’s not all…

I want to be very clear. There are certainly many things about Ahmadinejad that I abhor — locking up dissidents, executing of gay folks, denying the fact of the Holocaust, potentially adding another dangerous nuclear power to the world and, in general, stifling democracy. Even still, I can’t help but be turned on by his frank rhetoric calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration and, for that matter, generations of US foreign policy preceding.”—sallykohn

7) “When *ss-kissing chickensh*t David Petraeus lied his *ss off before Congress about the failed “surge”, capitol hill police tackled and arrested a pentecostal minister, damaging his ankle in the process.
...If you think America isn’t undergoing the same slide into fascist dictatorship today as Germany did in the 1930s, you’re kidding yourself.

...Those two reasons, more than the brutal assaults on people and the First Amendment, are why America is devolving into a bad replay of Nazi Germany. The lack of national outrage, to the point we do something about it; and the support of it by mindless groupthinkers in society who are so stupid they think it’s a good thing that we’re being subjected to tyranny.”—Archangel M

[...]

5) “I have never in my 50 years of life been more frightened then I am now. I have seen the arrogance of this White House and the massive damage done to our country. But the Katrina-size storm clouds are gathering folks. If we do not wake up now and flood Congress to impeach the President and Vice President, one year from now, Daily Kos may be banned and Markos himself may be disappeared, in a federal prison somewhere.
....This is deadly serious folks. This is not just another diary. We ignore this threat at our own peril. I would suggest even I in writing articles like this and the many writers at Daily Kos are personally at risk of being arrested in a future dictatorial United States. The government will use these writings as an excuse to put us away.

....I say WAKE UP Daily Kos!! If the people at Daily Kos cannot take this seriously and try and do something about it, then the United States, as a free country IS doomed. Enjoy your freedom to read and write at such sites as Daily Kos, because that freedom will be taken away WHEN Bush declares martial law.”—slw0606

[...]

2) The parallels are undeniable, and I see only one solution if America, The Grand Experiment, is to survive.
I want to stand by and watch it all blow up.

I want the dollar to plunge to worthless paper.

I want the stock market to implode.

I want the economy to plunge into chaos.

I want the Chinese to call in all the debt they hold.

I want an economic meltdown of such staggering proportion that even that idiot on Bill Moyer’s Journal who does not know the difference between a State Constitution and the United States Constitution, is forced to look around in mild surprise and wonder what the hell happened.

Only total economic destruction will get the attention of the fools.

...And I want it now, before this inept, self-serving Congress allows the Facists one more opportunity to fully convert this from the United States of America, into the 4th Reich.”—Granny Doc

1) “But do I still support the individual men and women who have given so much to serve their country? No. I think they’re a bunch of idiots. I also think they’re morally retarded. Because they sign a contract that says they will kill whoever you tell me to kill. And that is morally retarded.
Friends, the most important moral decision a man makes in the course of a day is “Who am I going to kill today?” That’s a decision you should agonize over, dream about, rehearse in your mind for hours, not just leave up to some hare-brained President you didn’t even vote for.

A man’s killing list is a very personal matter. It should be between him and those persistent voices in his head. So to sum up, I don’t like our troops, I don’t like what they’re doing, I don’t like their fat, whining families, and yet, I support them. Thank God I live in a free country. Thank You.”—AWhitneyBrown

For those who are still in denial of the fact that lefties hate America and wish for our destruction, to there and read all the rest of the hatespew.
The commenters are even worse.

Christopher Chantrill

The good thing about living in the modern era is that we have freedom of speech and dissent is celebrated as the highest form of patriotism.

So when a Nobel laureate like James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA, opines that maybe the reason that Africa is such a mess is because of intelligence you can imagine the reaction.  Said Watson, as reported by the London Times:

  The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.”

Anybody reading that—even a rock-ribbed conservative—will experience a cringe of embarrassment.  The more sensitive types, those fully accredited as “non-racists,” will likely feel more.  They will feel the need to anathematize Dr. Watson, strip him of his public appointments, and deny him access to the public square.

All this embarrassment and anger is odd because the west proudly advertises itself as a culture of reason, where ideas rule, completely different from benighted Islam where a teacher can get a jail sentence for allowing the children in her charge to give a teddy-bear the name “Mohammed” (the just and merciful).

And yet dear old James Watson has been stripped of all his public appointments and sent off to ponder the error of his ways.  So what’s going on?

[...]

  Since its inception, U.S. public schooling has been a battle zone, as left-wing and right-wing activists have sought to wrest control of the system and bend it to their will.

In the nineteenth century the public schools were used to push the Protestant Bible on the Irish Catholics.  In the twentieth century they were used to push liberal political correctness on Protestant fundamentalists.

These activists understand that reason has nothing to do with it.  They want to enforce their shaming code upon the benighted masses and they are not afraid to use government power to do it.

[...]

When it comes to Nobel-quality science, go-along conformists need not apply.  Of course, the Nobel Peace Prize is another matter.

Conservatives, as you would expect, own the reasonable approach to all this.  We believe that people should be careful about sweeping claims of reason.  Every society needs its prejudices, its shaming code, and its taboos.

When liberals demand absolute free speech and freedom from shame, they end up smuggling prejudice and taboo in the back door.

But conservatives are all in favor of reason when applied in a practical, gradualist way to the advance of science, the development of law, and the reform of government.

That is why we believe, as a practical matter, that after 150 years of government education it would be a good idea to discuss some serious education reform.  If nothing else, it might reduce the conflict over our schools.  But our liberal friends say that people who want to relax government control of education “don’t care about kids.”

And we believe that after 70 years of Social Security in which life expectancy at birth has climbed about 10 years it is time to discuss reform.  But our liberal friends say that people who want to privatize Social Security want to throw granny into the street.

It’s good to know that our lefty friends insist that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Otherwise people could easily get the impression that liberals believe that free speech is only for people who think the right thoughts.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Tom Blumer

Oh, how Old Media wants a recession. Too bad the economy isn’t cooperating.

The latest Institute for Supply Management (ISM) report on the Manufacturing Sector, covering about 15% of the non-government economy, was just released this morning, and led as follows:

  Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in November for the 10th consecutive month, while the overall economy grew for the 73rd consecutive month, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®.

True, the reading of 50.8% was barely above the 50% cutoff point for expansion. But it’s barely lower than the 50.9% turned in last month, and still came in slightly ahead of expectations, which averaged 50.4%, according to the Associated Press, and 50.7%, according to Bloomberg.

This makes three out of three fourth quarter ISM reports showing continued growth—two in manufacturing, plus October’s non-manufacturing report that came in at 55.8%, up from 54.8% in September. If Wednesday’s ISM report on non-manufacturing for November comes in at 55.9% or higher, it will means that the economy as a whole, as ISM measures it, is not only growing, but growing faster. Recession, reschmession.

[...]

More good news for America, and bad news for the lefties.

Thomas Lifson

Likening Republicans to beasts

A new fad appears to be aborning among liberal commentators: likening Republicans to various beasts. Ron Brownstein’s current “Political Connections” column in the National Journal, a conventional-enough analysis of the race among GOP contenders for the presidency, concludes with this gem:

  There’s plenty of stinging ahead before one scorpion crawls from this bottle.

The GOP candidates are scorpions?

Could this possibly be the same Ronald Brownstein who one month ago published a book entitled The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America? Is this bestiary metaphor what Brownstein has in mind as non-partisanship? Just wondering: to what animal has he likened Hillary or Obama?

Just a couple of days ago, Erin Burnett, reading the “news” on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, twice called President Bush a monkey: once as “the monkey” and then as “the monkey in the middle”. See it for yourself here.

Liberal journalists are well-known to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to employing new gimmicks of the moment. Rush Limbaugh hilariously compiled clips of liberal TV commentators hastening to employ the word “gravitas” when it was first deployed by some partisan war room as a means to denigrate then-candidate Bush by suggesting he needed a running mate with that quality to balance his own putative lack of same.

I am tempted to employ the phrase “herd behavior.” But for obvious reasons, I will refrain for the moment.

If the MSM holds true to form, Rush will soon be able to compile a menagerie of beasts in sound bites, as liberals seek to denigrate Republican candidates.

Despite the deniers and word parsers on the left, the evidence keeps piling up.

Noel Sheppard

Have you noticed the genie concerning the real modus operandi behind climate alarmism beginning to peek its head out of the bottle lately?

After the United Nations announced earlier in the week that rich countries - code for America, of course - are going to have to pay billions of dollars to help poor nations deal with global warming, several international press outlets published articles of similar content.

Is it possible media are recognizing that since the Democrat presidential candidates are all advocating a tax the rich platform it is safe to begin discussing the need for developed nations to foot the bill for international global warming solutions?

Consider an op-ed published Friday by Britain’s Guardian (emphasis added, reader is strongly advised to hide wallet or purse before proceeding):

  Our starting point is deeply inequitable with poor countries certain to be hit earliest and hardest by climate change. But rich countries are responsible for the bulk of past emissions: US emissions are currently more than 20 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per annum, Europe’s are 10-15 tonnes, China’s five or more tonnes, India’s around one tonne, and most of Africa much less than one.

  For a 50% reduction in global emissions by 2050, the world average per capita must drop from seven tonnes to two or three. Within these global targets, even a minimal view of equity demands that the rich countries’ reductions should be at least 80% - either made directly or purchased. An 80% target for rich countries would bring equality of only the flow of current emissions - around the two to three tonnes per capita level. In fact, they will have consumed the big majority of the available space in the atmosphere.

  Rich countries also need to provide funding for three more key elements of a global deal. First, there should be an international programme to combat deforestation, which contributes 15-20% of emissions. For $10bn-$15bn per year, half the deforestation could be stopped.

  [...]

  Finally, rich countries should honour their commitment to 0.7% of GDP in aid by 2015. This would yield increases in flows of $150bn-$200bn per year.

Sounds like virtually any Democrat presidential candidate’s tax the rich agenda, doesn’t it?

Please be advised that this column was written by Sir Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank whose October 2006 Review on the Economics of Climate Change has become a blueprint for eco-socialism worldwide.

[...]

  The “rich-must-pay” mantra seems to be catching on around the globe. And for good reason. Green campaigners and eco-scientists from Europe and the USA have been claiming for years that it’s Western GHG emissions that have been causing most of the world’s environmental problems and disasters. If that were the case, the West would have to pay a devastating price. There can be little doubt that this form of climate ‘justice’ threatens to burden the developed world with astronomical costs, undermining its international competitiveness and destroying its self-confidence. The West will rue the day they handed over the agenda of international politics and economic policy-making to their green bureaucrats and eco-scientists.

I can’t agree more. And, with Democrat presidential candidates advocating the same economic policy here, it seems a metaphysical certitude that the U.S. paying for international global warming solutions will be presented to American citizens by a green press as eco-justice for our relative prosperity.

Scarier still, with the U.N. leading the way in the spread of eco-socialism, if Americans don’t quickly recognize the developing scheme, we could be setting ourselves up for decades of international extortion from every country claiming we’re responsible for its environmental and societal problems.

More frightening is that one major political party in this nation, along with its media minions, largely agrees with this premise.

Heaven help us.

Scary stuff.  And it’s all based on a lie.

Tom Blumer

While we’re on the subject, here’s a reality check…

The quarterly report on home prices issued by the government’s Office for Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) is the most comprehensive and most reliable measure available of what is happening in the housing market.

Here is how today’s OFHEO press release describing results for the third quarter of this year started off (bolds are in original):

  For the first time in nearly thirteen years, U.S. home prices experienced a quarterly decline. The OFHEO House Price Index (HPI), which is based on data from sales and refinance transactions, was 0.4 percent lower in the third quarter than in the second quarter of 2007. This is similar to the quarterly decline of 0.3 percent (seasonally-adjusted) shown in the purchase-only index. The annual price change, comparing the third quarter of 2007 to the same period last year showed an increase of 1.8 percent, the lowest four-quarter increase since 1995. OFHEO’s purchase-only index, which is based solely on purchase price data, indicates the same rate of appreciation over the last year.

The full OFHEO report (PDF) is here.

The quarterly dip was the first since the fourth quarter of 1994. It was the worst quarterly drop since the fourth quarter of 1990, when prices fell 0.40%.

From 1995-2006, home prices nationally went up 117%, while inflation during that period was 36%. From 2002-2006, home prices went up 52%, vs. inflation of 15%.

In fact, I still say, “Bubble, schmubble.” If gas prices come down 25 cents a gallon in the next week, that will be a drop of about 8%—20 times greater than the home-price drop just reported. I don’t expect to see any reports of a gas-price “bubble” any time soon.

[...]

The MSM is making a big deal out of a predictable “crash” in a small segment of the housing market, hoping to produce bad economic effects to help the Dems in the upcoming election, but the truth keeps tripping them up.  Just think; if it were not for the “alternative media”, we wouldn’t know about any of the good news.  Scary.

When I say “predictable”, I mean that the housing loan market was jiggered to suit a social agenda, rather than being about sensible financing of housing for those who could afford it.

Christopher Alleva

Everything is Caused by Global Warming (600+ links)

Dr. John Brignell, a British engineering professor, runs a website called numberwatch. He has compiled what has to be the most complete collection of links to media stories ascribing the cause of everything under the sun to global warming.  He has already posted more than six-hundred links.

The site’s stated mission is to expose all the “scares, scams, junk, panics and flummery cooked up by the media, politicians, bureaucrats and so-called scientists and others that try to confuse the public with wrong numbers”  Professor Brignell’s motto is “Working to Combat Math Hysteria.”

This exercise is not merely a lark to show the abject absurdity of this global warming nonsense. Brignell wrote a great book titled Sorry Wrong Number, The Abuse of Measurement on this very subject.

Dr. Brignell is accepting additions to the list so if you have any send them along.

  Agricultural land increase, Africa devastated, African aid threatened, Africa hit hardest, air pressure changes, Alaska reshaped, allergies increase, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end,  amphibians breeding earlier (or not),  ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, Antarctic grass flourishes, anxiety,  algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic lakes disappear….(much, much more)

[...]

Reductio ad absurdum

Jumpin’ GDP: Revised Third Quarter Growth is 4.9%; Media Obsessed with Recession Talk

Economic growth for the third quarter, which was estimated at 3.9% a month ago, was revised upward to 4.9% by the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The BEA announcement is here.

[...]

The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from exports, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), private inventory investment, equipment and software, federal government spending, nonresidential structures, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by a negative contribution from residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

..... The real change in private inventories added 0.98 percentage point to the third-quarter change in real GDP, after adding 0.22 percentage point to the second-quarter change. Private businesses increased inventories $32.9 billion in the third quarter, following an increase of $5.8 billion in the second quarter and an increase of $0.1 billion in the first.

Ever since the fourth quarter of 2006, when there was a big downward revision to GDP because of inventory reductions, I have been wondering when the reverse was going to occur, because it almost had to. Now it has.

Two tidbits you may not see reported elsewhere (source info from BEA is here):

* If it holds, and I believe it will, this is the best quarter since 3Q03, and the second best since 2Q-2000.

* Again if it holds, the combined 2nd and 3rd quarter total of 8.7% (after the 2nd quarter’s 3.8%; quarterly percentages are presented in annualized form) is the highest since the 3Q03 and 4Q03’s 10.2%. 2Q03 and 3Q03 were a combined 11.0%.

[...]

Dennis Prager

One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world—so widely held it is not disputed—is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America. One of the Democrats’ major accusations against the Bush administration is that it has increased hatred of America to unprecedented levels. And in many polls, the United States is held to be among the greatest obstacles to world peace and harmony.

But it is not true that the world hates America. It is the world’s left that hates America. However, because the left dominates the world’s news media and because most people, understandably, believe what the news media report, many people, including Americans, believe that the world hates America.

That it is the left—and those influenced by the left-leaning news and entertainment media—that hates America can be easily shown.

[...]

There is another obvious argument against the belief that the world hates America: Many millions of people would rather live in America than in any other country. How does the left explain this? Why would people want to come to a country they loathe? Why don’t people want to live in Sweden or France as much as they wish to live in America? Those are rich and free countries, too.

The answer is that most people know there is no country in the world more accepting of strangers as is America. After three generations, people who have emigrated to Germany or France or Sweden do not feel—and are not regarded as—fully German, French or Swedish. Yet, anyone of any color from any country is regarded as American the moment he or she identifies as one. The country that the left routinely calls “xenophobic” and “racist” is in fact the least racist and xenophobic country in the world.

[...]

So what America does the American left love? That is for those on the left to answer. But given their beliefs that America was founded by racists and slaveholders, that it is an imperialist nation, that 35 million Americans go hungry, that it invades countries for corporate profits, and that it is largely racist and xenophobic, it is a fair question.

Read the whole thing.  It’s time we realized who the real enemy is.